If you thought we had perfected fast food ordering, think again. McDonald's is going to drag us all into the future, whether we like it or not. The golden arched burger empire announced Tuesday that it plans to acquire Apprente, a startup that specializes in speech-based AI technology. The McDonald's press release claims this will "allow for faster, simpler and more accurate order taking" at its drive-thru kiosks. Kiosks like this have been more and more common in McDonald …

This January, Tim Cook made the astonishing assertion that Apple’s greatest contribution as a company would be in healthcare. Now, nine months later, we might have a bit more of an idea what the heck he was talking about. A recent report from The Guardian uncovered pages of internal Apple documents containing Siri functionality instructions and transcripts. The investigation focused on the way Apple made changes to Siri’s answers to questions about feminism, gender equality, and the #MeToo movem …

Sitting next to Jack Ma, executive chairman of Alibaba, Elon Musk talked about SpaceX's plans to visit Mars. And then he went into full stoner mode. "I think it’s important for us to take the set of actions that are most likely to continue consciousness into the future," he said. "I think we should not take it for granted that consciousness will continue because we have not encountered any aliens." It got better: "Where are the aliens? This is the Fermi Paradox. Th …

Double Robotics' newest robot has a mind of its own. The previous iterations of the Double 3 had been more like "FaceTime on wheels," co-founders Marc DeVidts and David Cann said in a recent phone call about the telepresence robot on self-balancing wheels. But starting Tuesday, the screen on the roving bot will come with better built-in camera options — and it can get around with just a few clicks. Called "click-to-drive," the human controlling the bot from a computer b …